1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a camera capable of imprinting coded data, photographing data or a photographing date or the like, and a printing apparatus capable of decoding and printing said data onto the front or reverse surface of the printing paper.
2. Related Background Art
Many kinds of cameras capable of imprinting data onto printing paper have been proposed and sold in the market. Besides, Japanese Laid-Open Patent 62-50743 discloses a camera capable of trimming photography in which the trimming is effected during the printing process. The above-mentioned camera has a code signal generation means which generates coded signal corresponding to the data to be imprinted onto the film and an imprinting means which imprints the code image corresponding to the code signal into a region out of the scene area on the film surface. In the printing process, the data decoded from said code image is imprinted onto a corner portion or the white frame portion of the printing paper.
However, in those types of cameras, it is difficult to discriminate the letters imprinted onto the printing paper when the luminance of the object photographed at a place where the letters should be printed is high or when the color of the object is similar to the color of the printed letters. In connection with the above mentioned drawback, it would be possible to select an appropriate letter's color distinguishable in the scene during the printing process. However, selecting the color of letters suitable for the background condition requires special skill. Further, in the case of some kind of pictures, for example artistic photographs, the letters imprinted in the photograph are undesirable. To provide a white data area at a corner of the photograph is also undesirable because the effective photographing area is limited. In spite of the above-mentioned drawbacks, it is still useful to imprint the data onto the film surface because the correlation between the picture and the data can be immediately checked.